Project activities of Dr. Wiebke Wiede
Habilitation project
The project analyzes unemployment in two Western European countries (Great Britain and Germany) in the years following the economic boom. Using the concept of the "unemployed subject," the project examines the governmental aspects of unemployment and the unemployed in both countries. This includes, firstly, the administration of unemployment and the specific socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions under which it developed. Secondly, it investigates the "technologies of the self"—the strategies for shaping life and identity—with which the unemployed addressed and problematized their own unemployment. The social process of the "subjectification of unemployment" is situated within the institutional framework of unemployment, such as labor market policies and employment agencies. In addition, the analysis of social and humanistic representations and narratives of unemployment, as well as popular self-help literature, will shed light on the prevailing "truths" about the unemployed and unemployment in Western European societies, which, despite powerful alternative identity options such as leisure or consumption, still defined themselves as work-oriented societies. The study examines unemployment under the conditions of rapidly increasing and persistent unemployment since the early 1970s. The primary labor market policy instrument of these years was so-called active labor market policy, initiated in Western Europe in 1964 following the relevant OECD recommendations. Originally developed to reduce regional and sectoral imbalances in the labor market under conditions of generally full employment, these policies were confronted with labor market problems for which they were never designed. The study begins with this paradoxical situation of political control and uncontrollable economic and social upheavals.
